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Cemagref, Quality control and safety of refrigerated fresh food displayed for sale through misting, 2008

« In late 2003, the first experimental work concerning the effect of nebulization during the preservation of products which evaporate water naturally or in film packaging, show that fogging is technically feasible in a sales unit and it meets the objectives including:

Avoid water loss when stored without protection, preventing drying out.

Lower the temperature of packaged products to an acceptable level

In 2006, nebulization only lowered the surface temperature of the products by evaporating water freely around + 7°C in the lowest positions refrigerated. After further adjustments, it was followed by a market improvement in performance since the product temperature was reduced from 8°C to +6°C.

In March 2005, the first stage of the microbiological validation was created with the aim of checking whether there was a reduction of the surface temperature of the products of at least 2°C, it enables to improve the conservation by limiting bacterial growth.

After tests on samples of ground meat, it is found that lowering the temperature of the warmest products around +5°C, the spray allows placing the display of the “M1” room with a cold air temperature blowing of -3°C.»

Figure 8 shows the surface temperatures obtained with and without fogging. The comparison between the two curves shows that nebulization lowers 2.5 K the hottest point temperature. It is also observed that the efficiency of the nebulization is much higher when the temperatures are high.